“WELL?” Simera said. “Sun’s westering. And there’s an inn up ahead. Do we stop there and burn it down or freeze it out? Or do we turn off the road and look for some place to sleep under the stars?”
They had long since passed the last of the farms beyond Fort Halacira. The open country they rode through now, Simera told them, was devoted to the needs of cattle and sheep, and the few villages that tended to the needs of the drovers lay far from the road, built close by wells and open water. They would not return to true forest until they passed beyond Ondoladeshiron, assuming they continued heading eastward.
Both of them looked at him, and Tiercel realized that both of them were waiting for him to make a decision about what they should do next. He thought about it. It wasn’t as if they were actually going anywhere in particular. “Ride north until you find a Wildmage” wasn’t much of a destination. If they rode north for long enough, they’d bump up against the border of the Elven Lands—and then, he supposed, they’d have to turn back. It would take them a good long time to get there, though. He wasn’t really sure where it was. Nobody was. He supposed the Elves liked things that way. He wondered why.
But right now Harrier and Simera were waiting for him to make up his mind. Not that they paid any attention to him most of the time. Simera was sure that neither of them could take care of themselves outside the bounds of a city, and while they were learning fast, she was more right than not, so half the time she ignored anything either of them suggested. And Harrier, well, ever since the day Harrier had fished him out of the Harbor when he’d been two and Harrier had been three, Harrier had gotten it fixed in his head that most of Tiercel’s ideas involved killing himself somehow, and once Harrier made up his mind about something, it was impossible to change it. Tiercel wondered if his friend might be right. His ideas hadn’t been turning out too well lately.
But now—now—the two of them wanted him to decide where they were going? Well, why not? Because if they weren’t actually going anywhere, one direction was almost as good as another, wasn’t it? And he didn’t want to get any more people in trouble than he had to.
“I don’t think we should sleep at any more inns,” he said slowly. The feeling he’d had of being watched was back. It had been gone in Sentarshadeen—while he’d stayed in The Temple of the Light—but it was back now. “And I’d like to head north. Straight north. Can we do that?”
Simera glanced up at the sun, taking her bearings. “I don’t see why not. Nobody will mind if we cross open land, and if the cattle can find water, so can we. Come on. See those trees in the distance? We’ll stop there for the night. From the look of the land, there’s a stream not too far beyond.”
NOT surprisingly, Simera had been right. By the time they reached the copse of old oaks, they could hear the sound of a stream a few yards beyond it. As they led the horses and the pony down to it for an evening drink, Simera explained to Harrier what signs she had seen in the landscape to let her know the water was there.
“Your horse can lead you to water, of course,” she added. “But only if he’s thirsty enough. Silly beasts,” she added affectionately, stroking Cloud’s shoulder.
There was still a little light in the sky by the time they had the animals settled and their camp set up. By now, after a fortnight of practice, both Tiercel and Harrier were getting good at it, and the new equipment they’d bought in Sentarshadeen helped. Lanterns to light the camp at night. A cooking-brazier, so they would not always have to gather wood. With it they could heat soup or tea, make griddle-cakes and fry bacon.
Simera had also insisted on the purchase of a number of basic medical supplies, since while they didn’t really expect to ever be more than a day’s travel from an inn or a village, it was a good idea to be prepared. She’d also taken advantage of the stop to expand her collection of hunting gear, and as Harrier and Tiercel laid out the cold meats they’d bought in Fort Halacira, Simera set several snares in the tall grass. In the morning she’d collect them, hoping to have snared a rabbit or two for tomorrow’s supper.
After the meal, they took the remains far from their campsite to dispose of, and then hung the packs with their food carefully from a tree, where nothing with an appetite for a quick and easy meal could get at them. Harrier settled down in his blankets then—or on them, since the night was warm—but Tiercel pulled the last lantern they’d left burning over to him and took his workbook out of his pack. He wished he’d written down more about the High Magick when he’d had the chance. He wished he’d brought the Spellbooks he’d read at the Great Library with him, come to that.
“What are you doing?” Harrier asked, sounding faintly grumpy and entirely disbelieving.
“Thinking,” Tiercel answered shortly.
He knew he could cast a Fire Spell. That meant there must be other spells he could cast, and one of them would have to be useful now. The ancient High Mages had built Armethalieh with magic, after all.
Unfortunately, while everybody talked a lot about magic in the books he’d read—and there were a lot of spells written down—nobody said anything very specific about the why of the High Magic, and—as he kept discovering—there were so many important details left out. Take MageShield, for example. All the books said that was a vital spell to learn. But he suspected that he didn’t have all the details of how to cast it. And what—exactly—did he have to defend himself from? And even if he could cast it, he didn’t need a defense right now, he needed information.
There was Knowing. Knowing provided information, and he was pretty sure he’d be able to cast it correctly now. But you had to have an item to cast it on, and he didn’t have anything. There was Mage-Light. That one seemed to be the same as Coldfire, at least the description was: to create a ball or nimbus of spectral light which answers to the will of the Mage, or to imbue objects with such radiance. Wild-mages could do that. That one was another spell involving glyphs, and a Wand. He didn’t have a wand—though from the description they seemed fairly simple to make. After the last time he’d thought a spell of the High Magick was “simple,” though, he thought he’d wait a while before trying to make a wand. And anyway, making things light up didn’t seem to be immediately helpful either.
There was Lightning. He had no idea of how to cast that one, and was just as glad; apparently High Mages had been able to summon lightning bolts down out of the clear blue sky and that just sounded dangerous.
But then there was Conjuration. That seemed as if it might be helpful.
One of the books he’d read had been called Ars Perfidorum: the Book of Forbidden Things. One of the chapters had discussed the Conjuration of Illusory Creatures. That had been interesting, because it had raised more questions than it had answered. Why—not to mention how—conjure up something that didn’t exist? It hadn’t gone into details—the Ars Perfidorum had seemed to be mostly interested in explaining why a bunch of fascinating things were a really bad idea, and as far as Tiercel could tell, most of the information it contained was incorrect, though he’d read it anyway—but another of the books had given more information on Conjuration. What the Ars Perfidorum called Illusory Creatures were actually Otherfolk; the ones who had gone east with the Elves; not the ones like Fauns and Brownies and Centaurs, but the ones people—usually—couldn’t see. So what Conjuration really was, was a spell to summon up one of the Otherfolk, and if you left out a lot of the preparation, the actual Conjuration looked fairly simple.
He knew this was exactly the way he’d gotten into trouble in the first place—leaving out all of the preparation. But maybe the preparation was necessary because High Mages had all lived in the middle of a city. Maybe it had all been to protect everyone else. Wildmages were Mages, and they stayed out of cities for the most part. Maybe that was why there were still Wildmages, and there weren’t any more High Mages.
Tiercel knew he was guessing, and guessing wildly, but he was running out of ideas. He had to try something, and while he knew that Wildmages could Scry the future�
��at least, such powers had figured prominently in the Flowering Fair plays—such spells had never even been mentioned in anything he’d read about the High Magick. He needed to ask someone for help, that was all there was to it. And if a Wildmage wasn’t going to show up, and if the little he knew about the High Magick couldn’t provide him with a convenient spell that could either solve all his problems or tell him what to do, then all he could do was try to use the spells he could figure out how to cast (hoping they weren’t too dangerous) to call someone and hope they could help. Conjuration looked like his best choice.
His decision made, Tiercel tucked his book away, blew out the lantern, and settled himself for sleep.
Seven
The Apparition in the Grove
HE’D BARELY BEEN asleep for a few minutes—at least so it seemed—when the agitation of the horses woke him. Harrier and Simera were already awake.
“There’s something out there,” Simera said in a low voice. “Something big.”
“A cow?” Harrier asked hopefully.
“No.”
Tiercel got to his feet at the same time Harrier did. The campsite was in darkness; the moon had set, and it was dark under the trees. They hadn’t bothered with a fire, and of course they’d doused the brazier and the lanterns when they’d gone to bed.
“Should I light the lanterns?” Tiercel whispered nervously. Inside his mind he could feel the glyphs of the High Magick crowding just below the surface of his consciousness: fifty-two symbols that, used alone or in combination by someone with the Magegift, could do amazing things. He had less than a quarter of them memorized.
“Shh!” Simera hissed.
She was frightened, and that scared him. He could hear it now: something big, moving around through the grass. He could hear a wet snuffling, and felt a sense of size, even though he could see nothing.
The horses and Thunder were really upset now. Only their hobbles kept them from bolting, but they were jerking at them, trying to run, and the straps would break in a moment.
Under the sound of the horses’ panic, he heard rustling as Simera reached her weapons. He realized that she was afraid that whatever it was might try to attack, and was preparing to shoot it if it did.
“Bear,” Simera said in a low voice. “Find a tree. And light the lanterns.”
Tiercel understood everything she didn’t say, because Simera had spent the last fortnight warning them about bears. Bears liked forest, not open country. Bears didn’t generally wander around in the middle of the night. Bears were very very rare south of Ondoladeshiron. You could never be sure what a bear would do.
And he knew one thing more. While he and Harrier could probably climb a tree and be reasonably safe from the bear, Simera couldn’t.
The grunting noises were coming closer, and now Tiercel could make out a faint shadowy shape in the grass beyond the trees. If it was a bear, it was bigger than the horses. Much bigger than the little black bears Simera had warned them they might possibly encounter in the Delfier Forest. She was an excellent shot, but she’d told him over and over that a wounded animal was very dangerous, and he didn’t think she could either kill it or drive it off—considering how big it was—with her arrows.
He could use the High Magick to set it on fire. But even as he considered the idea, Tiercel felt a pang of revulsion. Burn an innocent animal to death just for being in the wrong place? There had to be another way!
Maybe there was.
He took a cautious step forward, feeling his way in the dark, and struggled to remember the shape of the glyphs he’d been studying before he went to sleep. He could almost feel the shape of a wand between his fingers. . . .
“Tiercel!” Harrier’s agonized whisper had all the force of a shout.
Tiercel could smell the bear now. It smelled like burning and old leaves. The dark shape in the grass stopped its slow prowl when it saw him. It raised its head, grunting, and Tiercel saw its eyes flash, coin-bright, in the darkness. Then it began to trot forward purposefully, as fast as a trotting horse. Tiercel raised his hands above his head.
He should have been terrified instead of embarrassed, but all he could think of was that he wasn’t wearing pants and he must look exactly like the Mock Mage in the Midwinter Plays, the one who wasn’t really a Wildmage at all, only thought he was. Then the glyph he needed rushed to the front of his mind and uncoiled itself and he wasn’t thinking at all.
Coldfire. MageLight. He didn’t really need a wand at all. . . .
A ball of bright blue light, brighter than the full moon, bloomed between his outstretched hands. A ball or nimbus of spectral light which answers to the will of the Mage . . . Larger. Brighter. He flung it toward the onrushing bear. Follow.
When the ball of MageLight had first appeared, the bear had stopped its headlong rush and reared up, making a startled “whuffing” noise, but Tiercel hadn’t really been paying attention. Now he did, and if he hadn’t already done what he’d needed to do to cast the spell, he would have been doomed, for all he could do was stare. The bear was only a few yards away. He could see it clearly in the light from the globe of MageLight, and wished he couldn’t.
That was what I figured I could scare off?
Tiercel stood transfixed in terror.
It was easily twice his height. Its fur was a bright coppery red-gold, and its claws were as long as his fingers. It roared out a challenge as the globe of light scudded toward it, and at the sound, the animals in the oak grove snapped their hobbles and bolted. The bear slashed at the hovering globe of MageLight, as if it were a swarm of bees, but the blow passed right through the shimmering azure substance. Tiercel was certain he’d miscalculated disastrously. Instead of frightening the animal away, the MageLight would only enrage it to the point of attacking.
It stared into his eyes.
Then it dropped to all fours, turned, and ran. The globe of Mage-Light followed.
Tiercel stared after the retreating animal, feeling waves of nausea and terror and relief wash over him. Suddenly a blow to the back of the head knocked him sprawling.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” Harrier stood over him, fists clenched. “You could have been killed!”
One bare foot kicked out at Tiercel’s thigh, flipping him over onto his back. “Ow,” Tiercel said weakly.
“Stop that!” Simera demanded, trotting over, a lantern in one hand. “You’re both idiots.” She reached down and helped Tiercel to his feet.
Tiercel looked at Harrier. Harrier’s fists were clenched, and he was breathing hard. Tiercel did not need to be able to see his eyes to know that they’d gone quite green.
“Hit him again and I’ll kick you until you can’t walk,” Simera said firmly. “What he did was stupid. There’s an end to it.”
“I scared it away, and no one was hurt,” Tiercel said placatingly. Though his heart was still racing, he was sure he’d done the right thing. Simera could not possibly have killed that bear with her arrows. And come to that, neither he nor Harrier could have climbed high enough to escape from something that size.
“You,” Harrier said with great emphasis. “Could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t,” Tiercel said coaxingly. Now that they were safe from the bear, they really didn’t need to fight with each other. “And I don’t think climbing a tree would really have helped. And Simera couldn’t climb a tree anyway. Simera, you saw that. What . . . was it?”
“A bear,” Simera said, but her voice was troubled. “Like no bear I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard there are bears like that in the Girizethiels, but that’s far to the north and east of here. And even in summer coat, they’re brown, not red.”
“Well,” Tiercel said, “we’re going north. Maybe we’ll see more.”
“I don’t want to see more,” Harrier said feelingly.
“Neither do I,” Simera said. She shook her head. “Come back to the camp. I don’t think any of us will get any more sleep tonight, but it’s useless to try to look for
the horses before morning.”
As they walked back under the trees, Tiercel looked over his shoulder. In the distance he could see a faint spark of blue.
They spent the rest of the night huddled together around the brazier, drinking tea and trying to make sense of what had happened. While it was true (Simera said) that the Great Bears of the north sometimes wandered south to attack livestock, normally only those who were old or ill chose that path, and the one they had seen looked both young and healthy.
“It’s a good thing you figured out another spell,” Harrier said doubtfully.
“I’ve got notes for a lot of spells I could do,” Tiercel pointed out grumpily. “It’s just that most of them need . . . things.”
Harrier made a pained face, and Tiercel kindly spared him the rest of the explanation.
He did, however, make up his mind to start looking for a suitable piece of wood to make a wand with. He wasn’t sure he’d ever have the nerve to use it, but at least he’d have it.
WHEN dawn came, they began the difficult process of locating their horses and pack-pony. It took until noon to track them down, but they found them at last, grazing contentedly in the midst of a herd of cattle. Upon seeing Tiercel and Harrier, Cloud and Lightning trotted up to them as if nothing had happened, allowing their halters to be slipped into place. When he saw that the two horses were being led away, Thunder followed.
Simera had told them that she wanted to track the bear and see where it had gone. Tiercel didn’t know how long the globe of MageLight he’d cast would last—he knew it would dissipate, from what Master Cansel back at the Great Library had told him, but he wasn’t sure when. And it wouldn’t be all that visible in strong sunlight, anyway. But tracking a rogue bear was certainly a part of the Forest Watch’s duties. And if it had come after them once, there was a chance it might circle around and come after them again. At least the bear was nowhere nearby now—at least, he hadn’t seen his globe of MageLight anywhere, though he’d kept a wary eye out for it, and he was fairly certain it would last at least a day.
The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained Page 15